Who is Nellie?
“In the jump seat John was crumpled up. Nellie Connally pulled him over into her arms. She put her head down over his head. She was pretending she was him. They were both alive or both dead. They could not be one and one. (…) She heard Jackie say, “They’ve killed my husband.” It could have been Nellie’s own voice, someone speaking for her. She thought John was dead.” When I first read this, I was really confused. I did not know who Nellie was and what her relationship was to John F. Kennedy. I was more confused when I looked up the footage of JFK’s assassination and did not see any lady cradling his head in their lap. So clearly I read this wrong. Nellie Connally was the wife of the governor of Texas at the time of the assassination. She and her husband were sitting in front of the Kennedys when the shots were fired. Both she and Jackie’s husband’s names were John, and that was what confused me. Of the interesting things that I found when I was looking up Nellie Connally was h...